Deploying hosts of virtual computing instances, such as virtual machines (VMs), inside a public infrastructure frequently poses challenges. Some existing technologies for rapidly provisioning hosts rely on network pre-boot execution environment (PXE) booting support and/or control over the on-premises network and additional on-site infrastructure. However, public cloud infrastructures typically do not support network booting (netboot) options. Without network booting support, PXE cannot be utilized for automatic host provisioning in a public cloud environment.
Hosts may be provisioned on a public cloud platform by deploying a custom-modified boot disk image for each host to be created on the public cloud. However, these solutions are time consuming, resource intensive, and burdensome for users. Moreover, in situations requiring provisioning of large numbers of hosts, manually creating and deploying a customized boot disk image for every host instance is impractical and potentially cost-prohibitive, among other drawbacks.